Chapter Text
He’d meant it.
Last night.
So when King seemed shy and embarrassed, Ram said nothing after he proposed, “Don’t tell me you got drunk and forgot everything from last night.”
He hadn’t, of course. Forgotten or gotten drunk.
Even if he had been drinking, he’d never have forgotten that.
Instead of telling the truth, when King seemed all too eager to go with forgetting, Ram feigned confusion for him. In their brief conversation, he saw how distressed King looked and felt his restlessness as he woke that morning.
King thought he’d made a mistake last night and was embarrassed. So Ram gave him an out.
After interrupting him, saying, “-And then you were just knocked out, right?” King continued nodding and said, “That’s good,” quickly and brightly.
Ram couldn’t really listen to all that he said after that, but King gestured for him to head off to the showers, so he collected his stuff and went promptly without a word.
He didn’t run into anyone who would have talked to him while he took a shower. It was a small blessing that the showers were indoors and the water was warm anyhow. On top of not having to talk to anyone, this would have been a great morning. But it wasn’t, and the newfound silence of him and his thoughts when he’d been surrounded the whole trip with loved ones made him wish there was someone else with him. Just another voice to fill the void, to quiet his brain.
Ever since his father and his best friend had an affair together, the fierce protectiveness he felt for his loved ones and the utter betrayal he’d felt were at constant warfare.
The sound of the shower and the warmth of it hitting his chest did nothing to make him feel better.
His brain pushed all these questions to the forefront of his mind as he scrubbed the suds away on his forehead. Questions that didn’t used to be there before.
‘Will mom be okay?’
‘Does Ruj know?’
‘Why can’t I stop loving Dad and her?’
‘Do they love me as much as I love them?’
‘Does anyone really love me at all?’
That last question echoed along the confines of his mind.
With how cold King acted towards him this morning in an attempt to be nonchalant, he was cut deeper than simple awkwardness could have. He felt the tears mix indeterminably with the beads of the shower; he felt the hot blood course to his head and to his neck under the strain of cries made silent.
He heard a couple of voices approaching the showers, stopping his crying. He finished up washing before they heard him. As they entered the showers, each separated by a curtain, he could tell that it was Tang, Tee, and Phu. They weren’t being quiet, so it was no issue for him to dry himself off, get changed, and leave without being detected.
. . .
King looked lost waiting by his ride. There wasn’t that natural, playful glow or curious energy that usually complemented his persona. He looked around as if in search of someone, but all his friends had already said goodbye to him. Ram knew this; he’d watched it.
It filled him with unwarranted hope that maybe the person King was looking for, was him.
This was the turning thought that finally made him walk over there. When he arrived, he saw a hopeful glint in King’s eyes, but it was quickly shut down by the words that followed.
“Then…I’ll see you back at the condo.”
Dismissive, impersonal. But, it was the condo, wasn’t it? Not a ‘see you later.’ or even ‘ back at my condo.’ But it was ‘the condo.’
King wasn’t kicking him out, or even suggesting that he was overstepping his bounds. He expected to see Ram again.
As King jumped in the car, Ram took out his phone, and without the hesitation or pity he felt this morning, spelled out slowly, “I was not drunk last night,” and sent it. The ‘read’ symbol popped up seconds later, but there was no response back.
He knew, somewhere deep inside, from the way King treated him before, and from what he said last night, that King felt something for him. Something strong. It might have even been the same thing that kept him from talking about what happened. And Ram felt everything for King. So he wouldn’t give up. They’d talk after King got back from his Grandma’s house.
. . .
King didn’t return that week.
Or the week following.
He was supposed to, at least that’s what Bohn and the other seniors told him; the trip was only supposed to be for a long weekend. But King hadn’t arrived back at the condo. He hadn’t been attending any of his classes, according to the seniors. King, at least to the faculty, had gone missing.
Ram had waited every day, growing more and more anxious, taking care of the dogs, watering the plants, and leaving briefly to attend his classes, immediately returning to the condo to finish his schoolwork; but every time, upon entering, he was disappointed to find absence in his wake.
On the last day of the second week of King’s absence, it was downpouring. All the water made him think of when King fell and hit his head, and then about the night he confronted his father's cheating, and that gnawing itch he’d been feeling since King had disappeared had reached its climax. The whine of the dogs from the spare room after every lightning strike did nothing to calm his frayed nerves. He was in the process of grabbing his keys, phone, and wallet. All but his umbrella to search for King when, just as he’d approached, the front door opened all on its own, and there King was, rosy-cheeked and sopping wet.
The relief of it took the breath out of Ram’s lungs before the telling sway of King’s body brought him back to Earth.
He caught King just as he collapsed onto him. The older boy started weeping into Ram’s shoulder without explanation, hugging him weakly in his drunken stupor.
“She died, Ram.” He wailed.
“She died!” He hit Ram’s chest with all the strength of a four-year-old boy. Not out of anger, but as a desperate plead for help. “Why?” He clawed. And if King was asking for an answer, Ram didn’t give any. He couldn’t. He knew grief; he felt it every time one of his beloved dogs died, but he’d never lost a person- lost his trust in them, maybe, but not them.
All he knew was that for some reason, instead of being with his family, King decided to get drunk, the waft of liquor radiating off his person, and come back here. The bandages on his head looked unchanged from two weeks ago, and they were also drenched.
King stood with his head shoved into Ram’s neck, sobbing and muttering incoherently, his arms wrapped around Ram’s shoulders while he rubbed circles into King’s back, supporting most of his weight. They stood there like that for as long as King could stand, which was about 30 minutes.
Ram didn’t know if it was the grief or the alcohol, but King was enervated. By his quieting sobs and his body growing heavier, Ram could tell King was losing the battle to sleep.
He put King’s arm over his shoulders and held his hand as he mostly carried him to their now shared bed. He layed him down as carefully as he could and tried to leave to get new bandages for King’s head, but King’s hand, which he’d still been holding, pulled him back.
Watery eyes looked up at him, red from crying for who knows how long. “Don’t leave too.”
And if Ram climbed over King into bed, jeans and all, without letting go of his hand the entire time, well, the bandages could wait one more night, and with how wet King was even after removing his pants and shirt, he could always wash the sheets tomorrow as well.
. . .
King did not speak the next morning about the night before, or anything at all. He was more quiet than Ram thought he could ever be, and it scared him, because this was not King. King was the one who talked, the one who made borderline flirtatious quips and jokes; he panicked about dogs and their late-night makeout session, but he was never silent.
That was Ram’s thing. But now that King wasn’t filling the silence, he didn’t know what to do with it.
Ram had woken up hours before King, which in itself should have been a warning sign of how badly wrong things had gotten. King almost always woke before him. He’d made him breakfast and set out his pain medication for his head. Ram also left the condo briefly to hand off the dogs to Duen for the time being. King didn’t need them upsetting him on top of everything else, and after calling Duen on the matter, he was more than happy to pick up the three visitors. Bohn would likely always be around helping anyhow.
He arrived ten minutes before he saw a peaked King stumbling out of the room, having finally changed out of his wet clothes from last night into a loose t-shirt and some pajama bottoms. It would be a stretch to say he looked well-rested. It was apparent the exhaustion ran bone-deep.
Ram ate his breakfast along with King in silence. He finished before King, who looked like he was only mildly interested in even poking his food. Ram stood after noticing where King had shed his clothes from the night before to start a load for them and his sheets.
On his way out, King grabbed him and stood with him, his eyes desperate and pleading.
Ram held his hand and pulled him along, and they both did the laundry. King even stood still as Ram took off his bandages. The pain must have been excruciating since there was a lot of coagulated blood and crusted-over pus from too many days without proper care. But King didn’t even flinch as he tore the bandages off; he just looked on absently with a thousand-yard stare.
Not even applying the hydrogen peroxide did anything to make him react. It seemed the only thing King seemed to react to was Ram’s comings and goings, negatively to the latter.
So they spent the next couple of days together. King would do chores along with him, would sleep when he slept, would watch tv when he did, the only thing that King didn’t seem to do along with him was take care of his plants, he did that on his own, and Ram knew when he did that, he was crying, and sometimes he’d come to Ram, crying into his arms, but most of the time he whipped his tears away and waited until his eyes only had the semi-regular glossy quality they’d taken in the past days.
Ram noticed the buzzing of King’s phone on silent that he never seemed to pick up. He knew it was texts and calls from the senior crew because they had been texting Ram nonstop to see if King returned, worried and concerned.
Ram showed King the texts later on the second day. King took his phone and texted the friends and the group chats that asked about him, responding to them with, “He hasn’t come back yet.”
“No, he’s not here.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is.”
After looking at the replies King had left, Ram was more than concerned. King would have never done that before. He loved his friends, almost as much as Ram loved his own; they were his life, second to his family. He had no idea what about his grief made him push everyone away but him.
On the third day, King’s friends texted Ram, worried about his attendance at university; they couldn’t cover for him all the time, and what he was missing would soon start to hurt his attendance record and grade.
So Ram approached King, and as gently as his abrupt manner would, asked to borrow his laptop. King handed it over dispassionately. His skin still looked paler than what was normal or healthy.
With King’s laptop, he found and emailed all of King’s professors, telling them about the loss and his inability to return to school for the time being. He got most of the responses back quickly, all with warm well wishes and a window of a couple weeks to give King time to mourn.
They may have thought they were being generous, but based on the way King was looking right now, two weeks would not be nearly enough time. He showed King the emails after he was finished, and once he was done reading, he turned to Ram. King didn’t look happy, but there was an openness to his eyes. He then layed down on the couch and put his head on Ram’s lap after moving the computer away.
King didn’t look him in the eyes but turned his face to the TV on the opposite side of the couch. He felt King’s breath slow as he drifted into sleep. They went to bed every night holding hands, so what was this to him?
Everything.
He’d been dancing around the word ‘love’ with King even before the tent incident. But Ram loved so strongly and profoundly that it was hard to ignore even then. But now he knew it with certainty on the same level as knowing your name.
His name was Ram. He was an engineering student. He loved King. He was also, incidentally, in love with him.
. . .
On the fourth day, after their routine came to the midday nap portion, where King napped and Ram took care of his schoolwork virtually, there was a loud and persistent knock on the door. He looked through the peephole, and it was Ram’s sister, looking distraught and angry enough to bust down the door. King didn’t need a broken door on top of everything else, and Ram was smart enough to adhere to common sense, so he opened the door for her.
“Where’s King?!” She asked as soon as he opened the door. The fact that she wasn’t fawning over King and Ram living together was a testament to just how serious this was. He gestured with an open palm over to King’s sleeping form.
Kumfah stormed over to him, looking like she was about to kick him before she frustratedly huffed out, throwing her hands in the air and pacing, still with her high-heeled shoes on. With strong reluctance, she loudly but without a word sat down next to her sleeping brother, petting his head, careful not to touch the bandaged area.
After a few seconds, she started to cry, quietly at first, but it grew a little louder as she continued. Eventually, King woke up. He sat up, looking bewildered and disoriented. But eventually, he hugged her around her stomach, resting his head on her shoulder.
“King, you–!” She cut herself off with sobs wracking her body before she could finish the sentence.
He started crying too, not sobs like hers, but remorseful, silent tears.
“You fucking bitch!” She said to him, hugging him back. “You were supposed to be the one who stayed with Mom!” The hug became forceful. “I have the boys to worry about, and Kaning is still abroad. Tan and Dad are there, and they’ve been great, but Tan is still the boys’ father; he’s taking care of them while I…—not to mention with the boys having to learn what death is while grieving I’ve been….”
“I have to be their mother, I have to be there for them.” She squeezed more tears out of her eyes, “I can’t be there for everybody else.”
King’s sobs became louder until they were crying at around the same volume, desperately hugging one another all the while. Ram decided now was a good time to leave the situation.
He escaped to the bedroom, breathing, and peering out the window. He then searched through his phone’s contacts, his thumb hovering over one name in particular to then click on and call it.
He spent the next couple of hours talking to his grandma on the phone.
. . .
Ram heard Kumfah leave the condo and King slowly enter the room.
He looked at Ram with red eyes, but some of the color had returned to his face. Ram heard him speak for the first time in four days: “I’m gonna head out for a week or two to stay with my mom.”
Ram replied to him for the first time since camp, “Okay, should I come with you?” He didn’t think before he said it. It was just the first thing that came to mind.
And maybe it was a trick of the light or a mirage created by Ram’s mind, but he could’ve sworn that there was almost a hint of amusement on King’s face.
“Thanks for the offer, cool boy, but I think I just need to be with my family for a while.”
Ram nodded, understanding. A small pang of sadness landed somewhere small in the core of his chest at the idea of King being gone, but he was more glad than anything else because it seemed true. King needed to be with his family.
Ram gave him a small smile. He felt his face creak awkwardly at the rare forced expression. It seemed that King noticed, however, as he walked over and grabbed Ram’s hand, pulling him up off the bed. King hesitated for a second, looking him in the eyes with his fists hanging awkwardly at his sides, until quickly wrapping his arms around Ram’s shoulders. Ram lagged for a moment before pulling his chest as tight to King’s as possible.
This hug was different from the hugs they shared in the previous days. Those hugs were for comfort. And in a way, this one was too, but it was different in the sense that this hug was for comfort from the absence of each other, rather than the absence of someone else.
They pulled away, their hands lingering in the space of the hug. Ram saw King looking at him as if he were everything in that moment, as he used to. The glaze was gone then, and Ram became King’s world. It was part of what made King King. The single-minded focus that he fell into when interacting with him one-on-one was part of what made Ram fall for him.
King cleared his throat, ending his concentration, and went to pack a bag.